About Hans Richter

In a career spanning six decades, Hans Richter was associated with some of the most radical art movements of the 20th century, from Die Aktion, a small association of German Expressionists, to Dada, to the Association of Revolutionary Artists, a group he co-founded. Richter interpreted the spirit of the anti-art Dada movement as a means to strike a revolutionary balance between order and chaos, to “bring forward a new kind of human being.” He viewed abstract art as a universal language and a means to this goal, and in the early 1920s created some of the earliest abstract films. As a political, Jewish, modern artist, Richter was forced to flee Germany when the Nazis came to power, eventually settling in New York. While in the U.S., Richter produced his best known feature film, the surreal Dreams that Money Can Buy in collaboration with Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst and others.